Russia: The World's Second-Largest Immigration Haven

“Immigrants aren’t rushing to Moscow in search of opportunity”—President Obama recently stated in an interview with The Economist , while making a larger point about Russia’s receding role in the world. While much of his commentary on the overall state of affairs in Russia was accurate, his comments on a lack of immigrants in Moscow revealed a blind spot in his view of global-migration movements—immigrants have been rushing to Moscow for the last twenty years, and not only to Moscow, but to cities all over Russia.

So, why are they coming? While Russia’s economy has risen and fallen over the last two decades, an aging population and high mortality rates have kept the demand for labor steady and even growing in some cities. Many of the immigrants coming to Russia are able to earn much higher wages than they could in their home countries. While life for the average labor migrant in Russia is hard, to say the least, the conditions they leave behind are almost always much worse . If there are no jobs in your town in Uzbekistan or Kyrgystan (which are among the major sending countries according to both UN and Russian official statistics), trying your luck in Russia is likely your best option. While experiences differ widely, migrants I interviewed in cities across Russia ranging from Moscow to Irkutsk often noted the appreciably better standard of living than in their home countries.

My emphasis on the presence of labor migrants and refugees in Russia is by no means intended to downplay the multitude of problems that are faced by immigrants and native-born citizens in Russia alike. Those problems are real and the focus of much study and journalism. However, as many of the immigrants to Russia are labor migrants from poverty-stricken, neighboring countries or refugees of ethnic violence and war, the term “opportunity” that President Obama used may not be appropriate. Is it an “opportunity” if you are coming in order to survive? This sentiment should ring true in the United States as the economic gap between our country and those south of our border is analogous to Russia’s economy compared to those of its neighboring countries and former Soviet republics.

A stark example of the effects such a gap can have is the child refugee crisis the United States continues to struggle with week after week. President Obama’s remarks about immigrants (or a lack of immigrants) in Russia coincide with the latest immigration debate that boiled over with the influx of child refugees at the border. It is ironic that in the process of drawing attention to Russia’s dwindling relevancy in the world, President Obama indirectly referenced one of the most complex and troubling issues of his presidency—the inability thus far to pass comprehensive immigration reform.

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President Obama seemed to be trying to demonstrate Russia’s waning relevance to the United States, keeping it “in perspective,” as he said, but, it is clear from the crisis in Ukraine and the ripple effects on all of Europe that Russia is as relevant as ever. Shouldn’t our goal then be to engage Russia and the broader region more productively? One way we could do this would be to recognize migration as an area where our two countries, the United States and Russia—numbers one and two, respectively, in terms of immigrant destinations—could work together and learn from each other. Though the United States has been an immigration destination for much longer than Russia, we are clearly still far from figuring out what works best. Both countries continue to struggle with what to do about masses of undocumented workers, detention centers, public health concerns, fervent anti-immigrant sentiment, as well as many other issues related to immigration.